Tag Archives: register

Spoken categories, modal verbs and change over time

In a recently-published paper, Bowie, Wallis and Aarts (2013) demonstrate that observations regarding changes in the frequency of modal verbs over time are highly sensitive to differences in genre (‘register’ or ‘text category’). Our paper, although based on spoken British English, may shed some light on a recent dispute between Leech (2011) and Millar (2009) regarding how linguists should interpret corpus observations regarding changes in the modal verb system in written US English.

The following table summarises statistically significant percentage decreases and increases of individual modal verbs as a proportion of the number of tensed verb phrases (VPs that could conceivably take a modal verb), within different spoken genre subcategories of the Diachronic Corpus of Present-day Spoken English (DCPSE). The statistical test used examines differences in observed probabilities between samples, i.e. a Newcombe-Wilson test.

For our purposes the cited percentages do not matter, but the direction of travel (indicated by coloured cells) does.

can

may

could

might

shall

will

should

would

must

All

formal f2f

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

-60%

ns

-75%

informal f2f

27%

-42%

ns

47%

-32%

ns

ns

ns

-53%

ns

telephone

-37%

ns

-44%

ns

-56%

-30%

ns

-44%

ns

-35%

b. discussions

-41%

-59%

ns

ns

-83%

ns

ns

ns

-54%

-20%

b. interviews

ns

-61%

ns

-59%

ns

-41%

-55%

-32%

-57%

-35%

commentary

ns

ns

ns

ns

-93%

58%

ns

ns

-64%

ns

parliament

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

-39%

ns

-30%

ns

-20%

legal x-exam

304%

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

1,265%

254%

ns

157%

spontaneous

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

ns

prepared sp.

ns

-63%

ns

ns

ns

327%

ns

-32%

-48%

ns

All genres

ns

-40%

-11%

ns

-48%

13%

-14%

-7%

-54%

-6%

Significant changes (α<0.05) in the proportion of individual core modals out of tensed verb phrases from the 1960s (LLC) to 1990s (ICE-GB) components in DCPSE, adapted from Bowie et al. 2013.

This study concerns modal verbs within text categories. Against a general baseline (words, verb phrases or tensed verb phrases), the total number of modals decrease in use over the course of the period covered by the data (at least, noting the caveat, for spoken English data sampled comparably). Above, we employ tensed verb phrases as the most meaningful baseline out of the three. See That vexed problem of choice.

Note that if we take all genres together (bottom row in the table), except for will, every significant change is a decline in use, but in the (large) category of informal face-to-face conversation (second row from top), can and might are both significantly increasing.

Legal cross-examination is a predictable outlier, but broadcast interviews and discussions appear to generate very different results. Continue reading →